June 8, 2006

While other reporters are sticking to their day jobs, Norman Oder gets the scoop on more Forest City Ratner funding of a signatory of the "historic" Community Benefits Agreement:

Forest City Ratner has given much more money than previously announced to signatories of the controversial Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), and the developer was negotiating that commitment before the CBA was signed last June. It's another reason to question the legitimacy of the CBA as compared with the pioneering examples negotiated in Los Angeles.

While the developer previously acknowledged giving $87,000 to the Downtown Brooklyn Educational Consortium (DBEC), Freddie Hamilton (right), the director of the group, says that the DBEC had received a $350,000 grant. That nearly doubles the known amount of payments to CBA signatories, to $538,000, though the amount is likely larger.